CHICAGO, IL – We are excited to announce that heartbase is now officially certified by the Society of Thoracic Surgeons to accept data for the newest version of the General Thoracic Registry. Version 2.41 will go live beginning with July 1st surgeries, and our customers will be given the opportunity to begin working with the new version upon installation.
As has been the trend with national registries, General Thoracic v2.41 has increased in size from 264 fields (245 core) to 412 (378 core), adding 167 new fields and discontinuing only 34. Among the prominent changes in the new version include:
• Analyzed Procedures Data Collection Form (DCF) is now required for all suspected or diagnosed Lung and Esophageal Cancer Resections. Thymus/Mediastinal Mass, Tracheal Resection, and Hiatal Hernia/GERD sections are optional.
• Non-Analyzed Procedures DCF is available, but is not risk adjusted, not analyzed, and not mandatory at this time.
• Updated Data Specifications and Data Dictionary, which includes fields identified for Record Inclusion. (Note: this document has not yet been posted to the STS website).
We believe that it is imperative to give our clients the opportunity to begin using a new registry version the moment it goes live, so our developers have worked tirelessly to streamline our production process for new and updated registries. This commitment to expeditious development has once again allowed us to become one of the very first vendors certified in the new version of a national registry.
To better prepare our customers for the changes to the General Thoracic Registry, heartbase clinical specialist Carmen Ernst will hold a special training class outlining updates to v2.41 along with a review of the updated heartbase web-form and number DCF. Heartbase customers can click here to register for this class.
If you’re a General Thoracic data manager or abstractor and would like to take a look at our new forms, please contact heartbase sales associate Alex Potanos.